Almost thousand years after it wiped out Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius could erupt
again at any time and Italy must draw up a suitable disaster relief plan, a
leading Japanese expert has warned.

"Vesuvius will erupt – that is certain, because it is an active volcano, even if we cannot predict when," Nakada Setsuya told a volcano conference in Italy.

Professor Setsuya, of the University of Tokyo, said that due to the thousands of people living around the volcano, which is close to Naples, "Italy must discuss and prepare a plan to manage the situation."

Since it buried Pompeii in 79AD, Vesuvius has erupted another 30 times, most recently in 1944, when it killed 26 people. But some experts fear the volcano, which sits on a 154 square mile layer of magma, is due for another, cataclysmic eruption.

Italy's civil protection agency has drawn up an emergency plan, which envisages four levels of alarm being given, culminating in the evacuation, within 72 hours of 550,000 people living in 18 towns in a 200 square kilometre "red zone".

After the start of an eruption, residents of a larger "yellow zone" may be evacuated if ash fall and gasses released by the volcano create danger.